The "C" Word

Firstly, we learnt about the 4 Fs which describes culture, namely Food, Festivals, Fashion and Folks.

For food, Singapore offers a wide variety of foods, from different races and cultures. For example, you can find all sorts of food at a hawker centre, ranging from Chinese to Western food. This includes Malay, Indian, Peranakan, Vietnamese, Hainanese and Thai food!

As for festivals, Singapore hosts many religious festivals such as the Chingay Parade, Deepavali, Hari Raya, Chinese New Year and Racial Harmony Day. Festivals such as Chingay and Racial Harmony Day especially help to maintain religious harmony among the different races as Singapore is multiracial. Racial Harmony Day is largely promoted in primary schools, so as to enforce the importance of interracial harmony at a young age. In primary school, my school strongly encouraged us to wear traditional costumes of other races and learn about the cultures and traditions of our own and others' races and religions.

For fashion, since Singapore is so multiracial, on different festivals and occasions, the different races put on their respective traditional costumes, such as how on Chinese New Year, we put on traditional clothes, like the Qipao, and wear red clothing to represent prosperity.

For folks, Singapore is a cosmopolitan country, whereby there are many people of different races and religions. Mostly, everyone has good relationships with one another and live harmoniously together as one nation.